Consumer viewing continues to migrate to mobile devices as they slowly drift away from the TV screen.
Maintaining its double-digit growth path, mobile now makes up 60.3% of all video plays, according to Ooyala’s Global Video Index for Q4 2017, which based its findings on anonymized online video metrics of the bulk of Ooyala’s 500-plus customers around the world. That’s up from a previous high of 58.3% in the previous quarter.
Ooyala, a maker of multiscreen video software and systems, attributed the rate of growth, which ticked up 11% year-over-year, on a jump in tablet views alongside steady viewership increases on smartphones.
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As a comparative look back at the rapid, increasing power of mobile video, Ooyala points out that mobile video plays made up just 17.14% of the total in Q4 2013.
The share of video starts on smartphones rose 1.7% to 47.5% in Q4, while views on tablets reached nearly 12.8% of all views in the quarter, a record for that platform, Ooyala said, noting that views on tablets jumped by more than 24% from Q3 and 67.7% from a year ago.
Ooyala also found that medium-form (5 to 20 minutes) and long-form content (20 minutes-plus) ate up more than half of all viewing time across all screens.
On connected TVs, long-form time viewed in Q4 chimed in at 98.9%, about the same from the previous quarter, and up from 96% in the year-ago period. Long-form viewing on tablets followed, at 62%.
Ooyala’s study also took a look at the multiscreen advertising landscape, finding that broadcaster pre-roll ad impressions on smartphones topped 54% in Q4, accelerating from 39% in Q3 and 29% in Q2.
Completion rates of pre-roll ads varied by screen type. In Q4, completion rates in this category on PCs were 87%, up slightly from Q3, versus 91% for connected TVs (a number that’s been flat for three quarters), and 86% on smartphones, up from 84% in Q3.
